Heart of Thorns: The Confusion About Masteries For Raids

So there’s been a bit of talk about raids lately with the announcement of raids from PAX Prime last weekend. A lot of people are excited that they’re coming to Guild Wars 2. The main confusion I keep hearing about raids is that the mastery system acts as an attunement process. I’d like to share my opinion on this real quick.

So at the GW2 panel at PAX Prime 2015 it was said that there will be no attunement process for Guild Wars 2 raids. An attunement process for raids, in the traditional MMO game sense, is a set of challenges that a player must complete in order to be eligible to participate in a raid. Where the confusion lies is that certain mastery lines (at certain tiers) will factor in as necessities for some boss mechanics. For example, we saw the gliding mastery line’s “updraft” needed on at least half the raid members for one boss.

Some players are viewing that the mastery system is the attunement process for raids. To this I say yes and no. No because of the traditional definition. You are not impeded with challenges in order to raid. However, I say yes too because it does block raid progression. If not enough people have the right mastery tiers completed in order to continue the raid, the raid stops there till some players get said mastery tiers or if they swap someone else in. If the raid can’t continue, then there’s no real point in starting it in the first place (other than to see how far you can get or for some rewards).

In conclusion, there is no attunement process for raids but there is a progress buffer if you do not have the correct mastery lines or tiers in order to raid. I suggest if you are serious about raiding to start upgrading your gliding and mushroom mastery lines come HoT launch a bit as those are the primary ones I believe will be needed for the raid in Heart of Thorns. Also, ArenaNet is releasing the first wing of the raid a few weeks after the HoT launch. This is to gives players a few weeks to get some mastery lines up to snuff.